A Reign of Darkness: Riddick the Furyan
by liebedero
Summary: The Necromongers sculpted an image for each of their Lord Marshalls. Life sized statues to commemorate their reigns. Zhylaw the First , the Artist, is dead by The Riddick's hand. It is the Furyan's turn to reign. For how long is another matter. CoR


The Lord Marshall - Riddick the Breeder. He is not a Necromonger, yet he leads us, and we serve him. We haven't any choice. To underverse he guides us, though we are not ready, this 'verse is not ready. Millions remain to be purified, yet he has ordered us to the Threshold. Selfish. He wishes the woman, Kyra, to live in this 'verse once more. Selfish. Zhylaw the First was never selfish, but he was afraid. Riddick the Breeder hasn't any fear.

You keep what you kill. Our own downfall can only be attributed to this fact. The law of our Religion extends this to all, those who are pure in the faith, and those who are not. Breeders. Filth. This is what leads us to underverse come. This is what greed and selfishness leads us. Our own laws hinder the greater good - the advancement of the faith.

Yet we are bound by our own laws to serve the Lord Marshall, whoever he may be. It could not have been foreseen that a mere breeder could overcome one of the holy Half-Dead. But Riddick the Breeder is far more than just a mere man. Perhaps it would be better to document him as the Furyan. For Furyans are an advanced people, genetically. And it was foreseen that a Furyan would bring about the destruction of Zhylaw, before he was Lord Marshall, Zhylaw the Artist.

It is I, the artesian of Necropolis, that sees what the Furyan is truly as I sculpt the golden statue that shall forever decorate the throne room, serving as a reminder to all of his reign and the unflinching loyalty owed to him - him deemed worthy of the title Lord Marshall, deemed so by rite of passage or death honor passage. I call him selfish, the others as well, but my attempt to do so is out of futility. If they saw him as I do. Soon they will forever.

I sculpt him in such position as he was first seen as our true Lord Marshall. Seated upon the throne of Necropolis, shined eyes glazed over as he sees a ghost image lying before him. The girl, the woman, one of our own, the first ever to turn away from the faith, dead at his feet. The image haunts him. His hands clench at the armrests of the throne, steel spiked knuckles pressed forward - prominently displayed - in anguish. Most see this as weakness, and intolerable as pertains to the faith.

They cannot remember that he is not of the Necromonger way, and thus has no call to be without weakness. Riddick the Furyan ordered her body be preserved. A first for a Necromonger, as death is the final goal. She was one of the faith, they told him. He refuses to listen. She will be reborn he says. In the underverse, you die to live again, he says. So if you enter dead, you live to die again. His argument is too close to probable truth for any to question his reasoning, though some question his state of mind.

What does he plan? They ask. To cross the Threshold and die with the rest of the faith so that one who betrayed the faith might live? Others know better. Vaako sees it. I see it when the blue light settles over his vision, and the veins glow blue and his face seethes with the anger of her death. Furyan. The artist in me wonders how to capture that hatred, bleeding from his silvery eyes, coursing through his veins in the aqua glow.

He will kill himself to live with her and pass once more back across the Threshold into this 'verse. He will die to live. Furyan. What other race of beings, I wonder, has that ferocity, that animal drive to accomplish all that they must. They were once heralded as the warrior race. Now they are all but extinct, and if some have their way, breathed conspiracy of murder will leave him for dead before we can reach the final 'verse.

I seriously doubt that he, or Vaako for that matter, will allow it. Vaako remains in the light of the faith - that the Lord Marshall's word _must_ be adhered to, despite the man who holds the position. Will Lord Vaako die for Riddick? No, and the Furyan would not wish that either. You keep what you kill. A first in command trying to kill you would not bode well for any reign.

Our faith will die if Lord Marshall Riddick is allowed to continue his passage into the Underverse. There will be a coup. They will try to end his reign. They might even succeed. Either way, the Breeder Lord Marshall will not be forgotten. He will remain as a warning to the rest. His statue will remain to remind all of the failings of the flesh and the inconsistencies of the faith.

The animal ruling over the inhuman - the instinctual and emotional ruling over the desensitized and faltering. For without a Lord Marshall to lead the faith, the Necromongers are little more than a blind mass, stumbling in the dark, sightless decapitated. The Lord Marshall is the eyes that see in the darkness that the accident of human life has brought unto us. The darkness all Necromongers are called to bring light to.

Riddick the Furyan is our eyes now. His eyes see in the dark. He is the antithesis of what our society is called to be - a light to fill the darkness. He shies away in the light. But if the light blinds us, how can we see in the dark?

We will follow the Riddick - it is our way - till some Lord takes it upon himself to end the Breeders reign. Until then Riddick's eyes will lead us in the dark, away from the light, and away from those who so desperately deserve to live once more in the Underverse come.

Until then, we must continue to blindly follow. He is our Lord Marshall. He may be our last. If he lives not for the Underverse, what does he live for? Survival. We have made the bane of our existence our leader. Now, we must pay the consequences. Now we must watch him give life, thus destroying it. Our purpose is lost, his is gained.

We have undone ourselves. Riddick the Furyan reigns.

* * *

Just a note, because someone had to get confused - While Zhylaw is the Sixth Lord Marshall, he is the First Zhylaw and they refer to him as such in the chronology of Necromongers in the novelization of CoR. I went by that. Which makes Riddick the 7th ever.


End file.
